Our modern, connected world continues to generate and store ever-greater volumes of data. The challenge is how to manage, store, share and make use of this amount of data in an efficient and environmentally friendly way.

Our Bespoke Software Development team has worked with SISP Technologies to develop CompressionX, a new lossless data compression product.

SISP Technologies and the idea for CompressionX originated from an algorithm conceived by mathematician and financial expert Nicholas Stavrinou. He shared his idea with SISP’s CTO Stuart Marlow, who saw its potential application to lossless data compression. “We’re seeing an exponential growth in ‘big data’ from sources such as sensors, edge devices and other connected devices. We quickly recognised there’s a real need for intelligent, domain-specific lossless data compression,” says Stavrinou.

How The Algorithm Works

The algorithm works by dividing a file into different-sized segments that will compress well as independent units. Each segment is examined to identify a periodic pattern of groups of bits that can be encoded efficiently. Each group of bits is then replaced by an efficient variable-length output encoding. Some information necessary for decompression is stored as a header.

Aware of our reputation for transforming ideas and research into commercial applications, SISP approached the company with an early prototype of the algorithm written in Visual Basic. “System C is well known for building innovative applications, so we engaged them to work closely alongside Stuart to develop production-ready code in C,” says Stavrinou.

A Collaborative Approach

“SISP wanted us to help them turn their algorithm into a commercial product that they could sell as a service or module,” explains Rachael Bartholomew, Account Manager at System C. “We’ve worked together to iteratively improve the algorithm and attain competitive performance indicators they wanted in terms of computation speed and ratio.”

Stavrinou adds, “System C has worked flexibly and collaboratively with us, and we’ve felt that they are truly part of our R&D team.” An added benefit, he notes, was that System C undertook the development work using practices and processes to provide traceability, ensuring both the correctness of the implementation and legal adherence to the patents SISP holds across Europe and the US.

Real World Impact

CompressionX helps individuals and businesses compress, manage and share large files efficiently, combining high compression with fast performance. By reducing file sizes, CompressionX contributes to lower storage requirements and decreasing the size of data transferred, improving everyday file handling.

The latest version of CompressionX is now being tested in real-world use cases with customers to evaluate the performance of the product on a diverse range of datasets and demonstrate practical value. SISP Technologies also has big plans to update CompressionX to include a Data Optimisation Dashboard to further enhance the efficiencies it can offer.

Next Steps

View our large selection of customer stories to explore how we’re making a real positive impact to our clients and communities.

If you have a question or enquiry, please get in touch with us today. We have a friendly team of experts waiting to help you.